


Like A Broken Gong

by slattern



Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Sex, Author is working something out, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a bear, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Healing Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Metaphysical Sex, Oral Sex, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining, Top Aziraphale (Good Omens), Victorian, hard times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:15:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21802015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slattern/pseuds/slattern
Summary: Crowley is sleeping. Aziraphale copes by bringing sexual healing to gay Victorian London.He's a fairly junior clerk, but a great-uncle was a member at Aziraphale's dinner club, and the in is irresistible to a young man with some ambition. Aziraphale spotted him right away, the scent of his forbidden desires, his shame and the tight, knotted pain of his spirit like a beacon to the angel. A conversation over brandy and cigars turns to an invitation to see a new manuscript Aziraphale's just acquired, turns to some more brandy in Aziraphale's back room, turns to several months of playful sodomy in his upstairs flat.
Relationships: Aziraphale (Good Omens)/Original Male Character(s), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: The Seeker Who Sets Out Upon the Way [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571059
Comments: 33
Kudos: 112





	Like A Broken Gong

**Author's Note:**

> OK, no one is more surprised then me that I wrote my second fic in one day, considering it took me three months to do the last one. What can I say, it was transmitted! 
> 
> In terms of content folks might want to be aware of, I have explored some areas about human/angel sex that are morally challenging, there's some play with a power differential and age/ physical differences, and also a twentysomething man is referred to as a boy. I just let it flow and tried not to judge as I was writing, and I offer this work in that spirit.
> 
> also, I started researching ocean liners in the 1890s so there may be more in this vignette.
> 
> Title is from the Buddha in the Dhammapada “Angry words hurt, and the hurt rebounds. Like a broken gong, be still, and silent. Know the stillness of freedom, where there is no more striving.”

London, 1890

It feels fine. It feels good. It feels fine. The boy's mouth is adept, and the small noises of pleasure he's murmuring around Aziraphale's cock are happy, joyful even. Aziraphale reminds himself to stay in the room, to share in the experience he's having with this human. He focuses on his senses, on the boy, man rather, Nicholas is his name. His hair is dark brown, sweat making it stick around his ears, the longer front draping over his eyes, even brushing over Aziraphale's shaft when the boy tilts his head to rub the glans of Aziraphale's cock over the back of his tongue. He's brought his hands up now, one is stroking Aziraphale, following the wet trail of his lips. The other grips the angel's soft inner thigh, fingers reaching to stroke the curly, golden, almost invisible, hairs on Aziraphale's leg.

He's a fairly junior clerk, but a great-uncle was a member at Aziraphale's dinner club, and the in is irresistible to a young man with some ambition. Aziraphale spotted him right away, the scent of his forbidden desires, his shame and the tight, knotted pain of his spirit like a beacon to the angel. A conversation over brandy and cigars turns to an invitation to see a new manuscript Aziraphale's just aquired, turns to some more brandy in Aziraphale's back room, turns to several months of playful sodomy in his upstairs flat.

Aziraphale first slept with a man in London just fifteen years ago. Ten years since the _argument_. He had lost control of himself that day, overwhelmed totally by terror at the thought of Crowley consumed by darkness, and of being _found out_. By the time he'd walked home and calmed himself, allowed the adrenaline to pass through his system, Crowley was already sleeping.

The first five years he'd managed alright. They'd spent long stretches apart before. Just, not since the Arrangement. And he found it much, much more difficult to be without his friend in these years.

The five years after that, he manages some more, in a variety of ways. He meditates as he'd learned from a traveling monk centuries earlier. He sees practitioners of various healing arts, seeking to balance his humours. He reads every novel available, including serial romances. He redoubles his miraculous cures and interventions, until Heaven reprimands him for excessive breaking of natural law. He drinks. He smokes opium. He eats mille feuille and potted shrimp. He tries the newly available ice cream. He wrings a climax out of himself, until it seems to bring no relief at all. So Aziraphale decides to try love.

It's not the love he feels for Crowley, it can't be. He can never tell a human the truth about himself, and they can't know him, or be his companion, truly, even if he did. But they can love each other, can touch each other and find joy and pleasure and comfort, and it can be an easing, for both of them.

Aziraphale's a man-shaped being, and he takes men as his human lovers. He's not Crowley, he can barely change his clothes once a century, let alone slide his corporation around the genders and genitals the way his friend can. It's simpler this way, familiar, and this way, the angel can give the men something, even if he can't give his full self. As they make love, as they drink, eat and talk together, the angel can send the tiniest tendrils of divine healing, of wholeness and repair. He can't make the world welcoming to their kind, the inverts, the Wildes, the mollies, but he can repair some of the damage, offer them some inner protection.

As it happens, it's nothing the humans couldn't do for themselves, it's just easier, effortless, for an angel. And it spreads, like a magical microbe, and the boy's future lovers will experience healing from loving someone inoculated with the golden seed, as Aziraphale thinks of it, chuckling to himself at the double entendre and wishing, again, he could share that little wordplay with Crowley.

Nicholas is making wet noises, sucking and licking Aziraphale's cock with increasing abandon. The angel reaches a hand into his hair, petting, and then tugging. He pulls the boys head up and their eyes meet. Nicholas is panting, his face flushed and mouth swollen. A trail of spit hangs from his parted lips. Aziraphale smiles.

"Come up here my dear boy." Nicholas gets up from where he's been kneeling at the foot of the bed, and slides across the coverlet to press his naked body against Aziraphale's. He's slender, and young, and he turns his damp face, suddenly shy, into the angel's gold-furred chest. "Do you want it my dear?" Aziraphale asks. He always asks. The boy moans his assent, opening his mouth into the thickest patch of hair in the center of his lover's chest.

The angel reaches for the oil bottle on the table beside the bed. He and the boy both watch as he drizzles a golden stream on the head of his cock, using his hand to stroke it over his length. His other hand is pressing into Nicholas's back, who turns over, so their bodies can slide together into a familiar, comforting shape. Aziraphale's larger frame on the outside, his cock slippery and hot against the the other man's warm, soft, cleft. The angel's arms holds him firmly in place, his oily hand slipping up Nicholas's shaft to slide across the underside of the head. The boy's breathy gasp turns to a more urgent cry as he presses back, his hidden opening invitingly willing against Aziraphale's hardness.

Aziraphale's left hand slides under the boy's head, his hand spanning up the exposed throat, thrusting his fingers into the mouth that opens for them. He strokes Nicholas's cock, softly, but with enough firmness to call more moans, muffled on his finger, as the boy presses farther back, a little wiggle bringing the slick, blunt head of Aziraphale's cock flush against his tight, soft, hole.

The angel uses his hips to thrust himself against the boy's slit, pressing his cockhead firmly at the entrance, pulsing it there, gently, feeling the tight ring softening. Everything is moving, thrusting, in the same rhythm, heartbeats propelling the stroke of Aziraphale on the boy's hard, leaking penis, thick fingers pushing his mouth open, the angel's cock pressing, throbbing, _beat - beat - beat_ , until Nicholas gives a high pitched squeal around Aziraphale's fingers, arching his back, and the angel enters him with a grunt of effort.

They pause together, Nicholas panting as he accepts Aziraphale into him. After a few moments, his breathing slows, and Aziraphale pulls back, almost all the way out, before thrusting home once more, gently, but firmly. His hand grips the boy's cock, sliding his palm over the sensitive underside of the head in sync with his thrusts.

This is the best time, when he's already inside the man, when he's been invited, welcomed, into his body. Aziraphale allows himself to drift, his hips thrusting, the strokes of his fist on Nicholas's cock, the soft pulse of his fingers into a slack mouth, are like a drumbeat, loosening his hold on this plane of reality.

Aziraphale can feel himself drift into the other man, his nervous system connecting, so he can feel his way through the combination of material and ethereal matter that makes up this human he's penetrating.

They're both languid with pleasure, in that dim, endless place before the climax can be sensed, when the boy might say, do this forever, I want this forever, with no idea what forever means to the being whose cock he's taking so sweetly. He's so open, unguarded. Aziraphale is in him, throughout all of him, in almost an instant. The angel can feel the knots, the hot pools of shame, of despair, of loneliness. He pictures his power as slender golden vines snaking around the hurts, the blocks, softening them, untangling them.

They rock together, Aziraphale thrusting slowly, never missing a beat or stuttering, for as long as he thinks the boy can bear. His hand and his hips grow more forceful, faster, urgent. He'll dissolve his little vines when they climax. The orgasm will open all the channels, and Aziraphale's work will disperse through Nicholas's whole being, becoming part of him.

Nicholas is crying out now, begging for release. Aziraphale is thrusting fast and shallow, twisting his hand around the boy's cock, once, twice and then he's coming over the angel's hand, shooting onto his bare stomach, his body clenching around Aziraphale.

Aziraphale turns, pressing the boy into the mattress as he drives into him, moaning his release into the still spasming embrace of the other man's body, withdrawing his power as they ride out the last shudders together.

When his member is almost completely soft, Aziraphale finally slips out. He falls into his back, extending an arm to invite the tired boy to cuddle against his body. Aziraphale doesn't like to clean up right after, and Nicholas has learned to humour him in this, as he presses his semen covered belly against the angel, sticking already to the hairs on his chest.

Aziraphale's right hand reaches out to the nightstand for a cup of cold tea sitting there, and brings the cup to the boy's lips. His other hand slides down Nicholas's warm, sweaty back, until his fingers slide to his rim, slipping just inside and feeling the wetness of his own come leaking from the boy, feeling the tenderness of his sensitive opening.

"How do you feel?" Aziraphale knows he's not gone too far, but his future lovers won't all have an angel's abilities. So this is part of doing sex too, part of Aziraphale's arrangement with himself.

The boy reassures him he's not hurt, bolstering his point by wiggling himself further into Aziraphale's hand. The angel lazily fucks him with two fingers while they kiss, between exchanging the remains of the tea.

The boy dozes, and Aziraphale looks at the ceiling. He's flat on his back, watching the shadows chase each other across the room as the muslin curtains shift in the breeze, filtering the last rays of sun. He doesn't feel sad, exactly. This is better than being sad, which is why he keeps doing it. But it's not exactly happy.

He can feel where the boy and he are glued together by the dried remnants of the other man's spend. It will hurt, a bit, when they pull apart. Aziraphale knows it's getting time to let go. He's taken Nicholas to some other clubs recently, to some literary salons, where he can meet others who have done some small work to unburden themselves of being sinners, condemned men.

Aziraphale should probably leave London for a while, cycle out his identity. It's gotten so much more complicated to be a human in recent years. Bureaucracy is rapidly becoming the bane of his existence. Maybe he'll go to America. He's never been. The boats have gotten so much better now, it's actually worth considering. It's hard to imagine being a continent away from Crowley. He always thought they'd experience America together. He's still not sure how he'll manage a whole new country, cultures, geography, without his friend. His dearest friend. " _Oh, Crowley._ " Aziraphale's pained cry is silent, but he feels it in his chest. With a deep breath, he brings his focus back to the moment, to the twilight bedroom and the heavy limbed boy sleeping against him. He presses a kiss to Nicholas's head, his fingers idly sliding through the wetness between his buttocks, only slightly possessively.

It's a few months later, and Aziraphale is at King's Cross Station, watching two porters wrestle his trunks onto the baggage car. He tugs his gloves up his wrists and sighs. He's doing it, he's on his way to Liverpool and the tremendous steamship that will take him to New York City and a few decades of North American good deeds before he can come back ( _come home_ ) to London.

At least they hadn't given him a hard time about the bookshop. He'd had to request a team from the Department of High Level Intervention, but the shop was hidden now, just an unsuspicious blank space to every eye, on every map, and most importantly, on every municipal record. It would be waiting for him when he got back. Would Crowley? Would he allow himself to be revealed when Aziraphale returned?

Aziraphale felt his shoulders bowing slightly, and straightened. This was a change of place, and he could change his existence at the same time. His _plaisirs d'amour_ were doing good, easing suffering, and eased his own suffering too, they did. He just needed to be sure to keep up the contemplations that helped keep his corporation in balance, eased the intensity and volatility of his emotions. He'd find love in America, as many times as he wished, for the giving and the taking.

Aziraphale nods to himself, willing his feet to head towards the steps into the first class car. He tosses his silver topped cane into the air, tricking himself into stepping forward so he can catch it, but a hand snatches it before he does.

"Careful with that angel. Almost gave it away."

Crowley stands in front of him, holding his walking stick diffidently out to him. Aziraphale, is remarkably, and unusually, speechless.

Since Aziraphale appears unwilling, or unable, to move, Crowley steps forward and puts the cane in the angel's limp hand. The demon is wearing a form fitting black coat, and a derby hat at slightly jaunty angle. The muttonchops are gone, his only facial hair a curving moustache and a small goatee that gives him a _devilish_ air.

"Best not chat here. I'll see you on the boat. _Bon voyage_."

And then there's just a momentary touch of Crowley's hand, the weight heavy and tender on his shoulder, before it's gone, and Crowley has vanished into the station's crowd.

But he'll see him on the boat.


End file.
